Of Death and Discord
by PurpleMoon3
Summary: Methos discovers an amnesiac godling on the streets of Paris. Featuring kid!Loki.
1. Chapter 1

**Death and Discord**

**A Highlander, Thor Crossover**

**Disclaimer: _Highlander_ belongs to the Davis-Panzer people. _Thor_ -Mighty or otherwise- is MARVEL's baby. **

**TIMELINE- Pre-Methos introduction for Highlander, so about mid season 3. Post Thor movie, but pre-Avengers.**

**Summary: Methos discovers an amnesiac godling on the streets of Paris.**

_Because I could not stop for Death-_

_He kindly stopped for me-_

_The Carriage held but just Ourselves-_

_And Immortality._

-Emily Dickinson

**M**ethos discovers an amnesiac godling on the streets of Paris.

Adam has walked these streets a hundred times in the past. Methos has walked them several thousand. (It is important to keep these two separate. One must compartmentalize: must be able to draw out personalities like well tailored suits and wear them rightly or london bridge comes falling down and ashes are all that's left.) Adam is a grad student being scouted by an organization older than any government still standing, and they think he doesn't know. Adam is a linguist specializing in the ancient and arcane and when he goes the anthropology department he's interning for will miss him deeply. Adam is at the beginning of a career that promises to show him the secrets of a world long forgotten. Methos is age-old wisdom and the hard practicality of a survivor. Methos is a lord of death and a conqueror of nations. Methos is the secret of the world long forgotten by everything but dry pages and dust.

It is Adam that is walking the street, hurrying to a meeting with an organization that promises everything a young history major could ever want, but it is Methos that hears a language he had thought died so long ago his own tongue falters around the syllables. They are crisp and sharp, clicks that make words with no true equivalence in any still living language, but for Methos the sounds echo in his skull and touch on memories of thick forests on the edge of deserts.

"_Ladies, ladies, ladies,_" A boy hidden by a crowd of tourists chirps, and Adam unobtrusively weaves his way through the gathered marks as Methos peeks out from the curious student's eyes. "_All you lovely ladies, won't you play with me?_"

It's a shell game without the shells played on a rickety tray. The kid is shuffling cards with expert hands, and there is the faint glimmer of a mirage that Methos, had he not had millennia of experience, might have missed. When the brunette with the floppy hat fails to find the king Methos isn't surprised.

"_What about you, sir?_" The boy asks with a too-sweet smile. It is a game Methos has played many times and when he looks closer, ancient mind filtering out the little things, he can read the French speaking lips even as his ears still hear the rhythmic clicking of his all but forgotten childhood. "_You after a big blonde boy?_"

The kid winks at his gathered crowd and they laugh. Adam laughs with them, and Methos feels something like pressure against his ears. The not-yet-buzz of an immortal-that-will-be. There is a second child with hands just as quick as the card shark's. Mostly. When a slim boy reaches for his backpack he gives a light warning slap, but doesn't give up the game. The thief flashes the grin of old camaraderie and goes back to the business of purloinry.

The kid at the table fans his deck and pulls out a queen. "_The Queen of Hearts is always your best bet, or so they say._"

Methos knows just what Adam has stumbled upon. He knows how these cons work. By tomorrow the two boys will have moved their operation elsewhere, wouldn't be seen for weeks until the theft reports are buried under mounds of unsolved paperwork, and if Adam hadn't been going to a mysterious meeting with a mysterious Don Salzer about future employment he might have never meet the little hustler. Methos smiles and puts down a few bills, waves the go ahead, and watches the shuffle because he knows what the creature before him is. He remembers when they rampaged; when the world was young. He remembers when it would rain blood and the thunder came as a howl of death. Elements given human shape so that the people could understand them. There have been many, past and present, and though they all fade away only to be reborn, changed, Methos stays the same. Worlds end and empires fall, but the Horsemen remain on the edges of memory and the whisper of nightmares.

"_Good try, little trickster._" Methos clicks back with a rusty accent that sounds more like whistling, and flips over his card. The Queen of Hearts stares up at him and the child-god frowns in confusion. Does he not know who -what- he himself is? Methos pockets his won money with a shrug. "_What is your name?_"

"_What language is that, Mister?_" The kid questions, eyes unfocused, before shaking his head causing messy hair to flop about roguishly. "_I'm Serrure, isn't that right, ladies?_"

Lock. It explains so much. Methos knows just which trickster it is that stands before him, unaware, and he knows just what Kronos would have made of the such lost, unprotected potential. There are Immortals with powers beyond long life; those who can implant images in the mind, those with silver tongues, and even those who can absorb and release energy. He'd once knew a man who could rewrite reality to his whim even if he had called his art _Illusion_.

Methos will have to arrange an accident for Adam. Something with a low likelihood of body retrieval. Perhaps something with his car's breaks... and of course the second child with quick, seeking hands will have to be redirected to another. Methos can already see the loyalty stitching him to the little god: natural charisma and latent power working on a subconscious level. Well, Methos keeps his ear to the ground and the grapevine has whispered about a certain highlander taking in a thief... and what bleeding heart could say no to such a precocious child? If not, there was always Amanda. She adored children, and had never quiet gotten over the lost of her first student.

Yes, Methos thinks as he exchanges pleasantries and scratches the back of his head as if embarrassed at the attention, he hasn't taken a student in some time. Not since Byron, anyway, and it would be nice to have some companionship for a while.


	2. Chapter 2

** Of Death and Discord**

**A Highlander, Thor Crossover**

**A/N- So I totally wasn't expecting to continue this, but it seems Loki had other plans. Might be 3-4 more chapters.  
**

_I'm nobody! Who are you?  
Are you nobody, too?  
Then there's a pair of us- don't tell!  
They'd banish us, you know._

-Emily Dickinson

**S**errure was a corpse fished out of the Seine and left to rot on the bank, modesty preserved by torn nets, trash, and bits of old fishing line. His skin was death-blue and his breath gone. Drunk on ill-watched wine and the relief of making enough from the day to keep _Père_ content, Clé -though last week he was Alric, and the month before he wanted to be Germaine- would poke Serrure in the side and say that the other boy was but a babe new-born from the womb of France herself, delivered unto them by the misty arms of Madame Seine. For all Serrure knows, both stories are true. Serrure does not know how he came to be in Paris -if he was born there, or traveled from somewhere else, or if there has been some dramatic, heart-stopping battle that ended with him falling into the rushing waters to meet not-so-certain death. Perhaps he was like _Anastasia_, a royal lost without her -his- memory.

But life isn't a Disney story, and in all likelihood Ana is just as dead as the rest of her family.

However it happened, Serrure's first clear memory is waking up cold, naked, half-submerged in mud and reeds while a boy as skinny and pale and nearly as dirty as himself gently slapped at his face telling him to wake up. To not be dead. Alric -now Clé, compliment to his own chosen Serrure, because there are no rules and they can be whoever they chose- had pulled him out of the sucking muck and literally offered the shirt off of his back.

"_I have pants._" The other boy reasoned. "_You don't. How did you get in the water, anyway?_"

Clé doesn't have any parents that he can remember, either, except for _Père_ who doesn't really count. _Père_ keeps the police from looking too deeply, but sometimes the recompense he takes is more than they can give, and it hurts. But all Clé has ever known are the streets -_"I think there might have been a woman, once. Maybe. I think I remember a woman... or maybe she was just a dream?"_- and they are all Serrure knows, now, too.

Serrure ignores the desperation in Clé's eyes as he clamps their hands together and declares them brothers before all the other cliques and gangs inhabiting the City of Lights. They sleep together, when they sleep, back-to-back for protection under too-thin blankets and sometimes Serrure wakes sweating with his heart in his throat and he does not know why.

(Neither of them sleep when it rains. Serrure, because the sound of thunder evokes some instinctual, visceral fear within, and Clé because while the rumbling thunder worries him not at all -"_It is just sound, Serrure. Impotent grumbles of a constipated sky-god._"- the bright flare of lightning causes the thief to freeze and his pupils to dilate as his breath comes in harsh gasps. Neither know why they react as they do, but Clé promises to protect Serrure from the thunder if Serrure will guard him from the lightning.)

They have no history. No family. They are nobodies in the endless streams of somebodies but they get along just fine on their own, playing cons that work much better -and are far more profitable- with two instead of one. They don't need anyone else. They are all the family they need.

But then the man comes, the man who says his name is Adam but Serrure instinctively knows this to be false. So he just calls the man Mister. And Mister knows his name before it was Serrure, but when he tries to explain things to Serrure the world goes cold and dark and an old man is telling Serrure _No_ and Serrure is on the ground holding himself because he _exists_ and he is _real_ and the past few months haven't been an illusion, a lie, an _imitation of life_.

Mister buys them dinner as way of apology. The man calls Serrure _Trickster_ if he calls him anything at all and Serrure doesn't mind so long as he doesn't use the _Other_ name that is _not him_.

The sword Mister puts in Serrure's hand is old and odd, but feels strangely light and familiar.


	3. Chapter 3

**Of Death and Discord**

**A Highlander, Thor Crossover**

_A wounded deer leaps highest,_  
_I've heard the hunter tell;_  
_'Tis but the ecstasy of death,_  
_And then the brake is still._

-Emily Dickinson

_Keep your blade up. Feet moving. Always have an avenue of retreat._

Serrure likes the croissants best. The Old Man makes them himself, holds his hands under the ice-water until his skin is cold, and folds the layers of dough expertly. Serrure likes to watch his hands -They aren't like Serrure's hands, nor anyone else's, with fingers that are long and dextrous and deceptively strong.- knead and chop and roll. The croissants always come out soft and flaky, and warm, and Serrure loves the way Darius' honey-butter dissolves on his tongue.

_The sword is a weapon, and a good one, but not the only weapon. Not_ your_ weapon._

Serrure likes Darius for the most part, but he does get annoyed when the War Lord -Because that is what he is, under the monk robes at his core, and even he doesn't deny it, doesn't try to sugar coat what he was.- ruffles his hair and calls him _Veles_. The Old Man and the War Lord don't have any regular schedule of meeting, there is a game of chess that has been going on for months as far as Serrure can tell, but somehow they always seem to know when one or the other is near.

_Your best weapon is your head, your ability to think, never loose that._

From Darius, Serrure learns how to brew mead, and not the stuff served now-a-days produced for commercial use but real and aged and sweet. Serrure likes to steal sips of it, curl his toes as the unfinished product lands in his gut, and smiles beautifully when the War Lord looks up from his measurements. "Is it sweet as you, little _Veles_?"

"Non, Dear Darius, for I am far sweeter than any summer's day." The words trip off Serrure's tongue which twists and turns and forms more languages than Serrure thought it was possible to know. The War Lord switches as often as the Old Man, as if testing for Serrure for something, and so far he's passed with flying colors. The written, though, that still often resembles so much gibberish.

_Very good. Tomorrow we'll start with knives. Now, what are the three tenants?_

The Old Man teaches him more than the Dance and the Sword. Serrure learns about culture from one who lived it. He learns about societies where hearts were -Still are, _hush_.- eaten to absorb the spiritual power of the victim. He learns of wars, battles fought, he learns of the lived history through stories that paint the Old Man as everything from a slave at Trimalchio's banquet -And Serrure decides that no matter how tasty the end result preparing dormice for eating is a sticky, too- troublesome process.- to a lawgiver on a _Thing_.

One day, Serrure hopes to meet Byron. He sounds fun.

_"Live."_

Serrure learns much, and he has always been thirty for knowledge, with a warm bed and a roof over his head. His belly is almost always full. But he misses his brother. Serrure pens a note thanking the Old Man for all his help and slips out the window with nothing but the clothes on his back, a small bag of water and food (and mead) and his sword. The Old Man says it is his. He doesn't feel guilty -Not that he would, if it were not.- about keeping the beautiful antique with him.

The trickster takes a train, whispering to the wind _I am a god_ while clinging to the roof. Belief drips off of him like dew off a blade of grass, because the Old Man doesn't lie -To him.- and especially not about this. No one sees the little boy as the train departs, or as he plucks wallets from purses and removes the cash because he has willed it so.

_"Grow stronger."_

Clé is waiting for him at the hostel. Serrure can feel his lips crack, his smile is so wide, and though he's never seen one up close he can't help but think his brother smells like horses. Amanda and he have joined a traveling circus, Clé complains, and while the work is hard but enjoyable, and the people are a laugh or twenty, he can't imagine going to Moscow and so far away from Serrure for so long. Letters and phone calls are not enough.

They whisper. They make plans. They hold each other, punch shoulders for stupid plans, and exchange lessons.

_"Fight another day."_

They are considering stealing a car when a shadow falls over them. A hand comes to rest painfully on his brother's shoulder and dark voice whispers, "Why, you are but a babe. No idea what you really are... "

Clé does not yet have a sword: his teacher preferring to focus on the use of innocence and guile until her charge grew into his adult form.

Serrure does, and he knows almost instinctively how to use it.

When the storm quiets down both Amanda and the Old Man have arrived. Serrure is shaking -_I killed a man._- the woman taking them both in her arms, all worried affection, and Clé cries into his neck. Serrure looks into the Old Man's unreadable eyes. "The man who controls his own destiny is a god. I am a god.*"

The Old Man nods, and the smallest of smiles graces his lips.

*Shamelessly stolen from the movie, A Better Tomorrow.


End file.
